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Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Yip, DH is back from his trip to Thailand and I am intense aware of my role as the good wife again. It actually started the day before he returned when I decided to wash the carpets. I mean there is no need for him to know that I had heaps of fun while he spent his our hard earned money. It is much better to make him believe I swished and swiped all day long putting him on a guilt trip that might just lead to a little financial bonus (if there's any left after the trip!). So this is what my passage looked like after washing the carpets.

In the mean time Wimbledon has started - how do you focus on all at the same time? My party might as well be a 'non-party' as I just don't get around to organize everything. Still haven't invited everyone yet! The blonde is shouting orders for her 21st and I'm barely touching ground.

However come late afternoon/early evenings with the parrot asleep, I do get to treat myself by making a block or 2 and this is my progress on the Universal Beauty quilt I started with Karin at their cabin.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

My blonde and I decided that it is time that DH should return now. At the rate the two of us have been eating out or ordering in we'll have to attend a boot camp soon.

Apart from the dinners we have together we also have breakfast and lunch dates with friends separately from each other. So at night the main topic of conversation would be what all we had to eat for the day.

For some reason both of us are on a blue cheese high and at least one course would contain blue cheese. Another decision made but not yet kept...... we cannot do more than one course. Main meal, drink, that's it!

We did however decide to visit restaurants that we would not usually go to and what a lovely surprise some of these turned out to be. Look at these original serviette rings.

This is the roof of one of the bars at a restaurant. It looks like a fish pond but the roof is actually painted blue with little rubber fish hanging from it.

Another huge mistake was lunch with friend, Marinda - all started out well, chicken salad with wine and then Marinda just had to buy us a cocktail called Panty Dropper. Everything went haywire after this and I'm still surprised that we actually made it home! At dinner with the kids they kindly informed me that this drink was so appropriate seeing that it was international 'no-panties' day. Who makes up all of this?

Even the cats seem to go somewhat overboard with their eating habits. Ashes caught in the act of stealing biltong!

Tonight rugby and even more food with another group of friends. May this now be the last major eating event!

Friday, June 22, 2012

I spent a whole day making invitation cards - not quite my scene. Applique was replaced with rubber stamps, beads with glitter paint, fabric with paper and my rotary cutter with a craft knife.

I didn't quite know what I was doing but luckily friend, Marinda, an avid scrap-booker, came to my rescue with advice on the best tools and shortcuts and by 10 pm I could pack up knowing my invitations were done - whoopee!

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Very few of my ideas on how I would enjoy quiet and peaceful days while DH is in Thailand came true. This year July is rather hectic in our family with no less than 3 large events I need to plan. This week I started planning my own birthday party and I've been driving around trying to find a suitable venue, start measuring tables, letting my mind go to find decor ideas and making invitation cards.

Quilting has been put on the back burner even though I would have loved to have some hand work to do when Wimbledon starts later this month. I did however manage to add my finished purple Dear Jane blocks to the already finished ones and also added 2 more rows to the center piece.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

I own an over-locker but being a quilter hardly ever uses it. Last week however I needed rolled hems on organza table overlays and had to use the over-locker. Needless to say I couldn't get it right, so with machine in one hand and organza in the other I stormed our local PFAFF dealer. O my, this woman is so patient and within minutes she calmly told me my thread did not run through the tension plates. How very clever of me? Then everything worked wonderfully and I even offered to do rolled hems for my friends PROVIDED they have green fabric as I had green thread on the machine!

While out shopping with my blonde I bought fabric for table cloths and even though I don't have a clue to what kind of fabric it is, it didn't feel all that stiff, so I figured rolled hems can work on this as well and I even changed the thread to black. Took me forever and a day but I eventually got there.

So see I can do a little more than just quilting, not much but at least a little......

Sunday, June 17, 2012

I am planning a skill builder workshop on patches next month and this week kept myself busy making a couple of projects for class.

Sitting through a workshop taking notes and looking at pictures not making something to show afterwards is no fun. So I thought of taking my February beginner quilters through a quick memory check doing everything from piecing, through sandwiching and free motion quilting to binding while turning their patches into little gift bags afterwards.

I had lots of fun folding and decorating these, I hope they will too. Went shopping with my blonde this morning, had a mean breakfast and then purchased a light read to entertain myself with this afternoon.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

First we bumped up Father's Day to Friday seeing that DH left for Thailand early Saturday morning and I got this photo of my family. Hard to get all of them to pose which never looks natural so this is extra special.

Not much came of my plans to stay in my PJ's, not go anywhere or see anyone while the mister is away as the big kids wanted to have their pregnancy photos taken and asked to use our garden. So up and dressed for the big photo session. These two (geeks) have ideas of their own so my captures are just how they planned it anyway. So we continued bumping!

Sunday, June 10, 2012

See, I thought nothing else could go wrong. Karin and I left just after 4 pm on Friday and none of our initial worries about hectic traffic realized. We had a dream trip and managed the strange car just fine; even enjoyed the scenic view as we neared the farm where the cabin is built.

The only slight problem we encountered was the unfairness of the mail species. The photo on the left shows the light the men have for fishing. It can easily shine across the dam compared to the lighting we have for sewing inside. Equal rights they say, I don't think so!

While poor Karin ran around switching on electricity, turning on gas and getting water running I started unpacking the car and even the rain was kind enough to give us chance to unpack completely before coming down again. I made Karin pose for 'one last neat' photo as we didn't bring any clothes other than our PJ's and had no intention of getting dressed or painted over the weekend. We were two women alone on a farm, in a cabin by the dam - why bother?

To curb the cold we opened a bottle of Old Brown Sherry and we were soon warm enough to start sewing and I got 4 blocks done before retreating to bed at 1 am on Saturday morning.

Getting up on Saturday morning was slightly harder as the bed was surely the best place to be although these early morning visitors obviously decided to seize the day.

The rest of the day was as unpredictable as tomorrow itself. We had every possible weather condition imaginable; wind, sunshine, hail, ice-rain, snow. Now what foreign readers might not know is that snow in South Africa is about as rare as chicken teeth. The last time I experienced snow was in 2004 and here we had it on our weekend retreat. Not much sewing got done - we played around in the snow (in our ONLY sets of PJ's) like kids and didn't even feel the cold.

Or let's say "didn't feel the cold until we got back inside!" and then the OBS had to come to our rescue again.

I guess due to the cold we ate non-stop or we at least blamed the cold weather for us eating so much. We did however decide on our next trip we only take laxatives. Gosh, gluttons are made, not born!

In between all the weather conditions we did get a little sewing done in our temporary sewing setup.

Karin in the end decided that these curves were just too much for a quilt she plans to give away and started making her own wonky log cabin blocks instead and this is what our temporary design wall looked like before we started packing up.

Returned home on Sunday morning and I got a lovely surprise when DH put this massive 2,5 meter square design wall up for me in the passage just as I exit my sewing room. Now I can put all the blocks for a huge King sized quilt up without having blocks overlap each other. O, the man has his moments!

Friday, June 08, 2012

A while back during a conversation it turned out that 4 of us all bought the same universe panel but none of us heave really started making something of it. What would friend, Rina suggest? "Hettie, design us a pattern". NO! I am really not that kind. I use my EQ way too little to get that brave but I knew what I planned with my panel and said the other 3 were welcome to do what I do or design their own. They however wanted single bed quilts while mine would be for a double bed, so it was just a matter of re-sizing the blocks to show them my idea and they all liked it. This is what I'd like my panel to look like as a completed quilt.

The next step was to find a date that would suit all 4 of us at Karin's cabin - without men, families or pets and we set a date. However instigator, Rina made other plans, Marie couldn't make it, so Karin and I thought that we've set out the date, arranged with the men to do the household thing, so we're sticking to the plan.

Little did we know that the weather would turn mean with warnings of snow on the mountains, rain and bitter cold weather but since when did cold weather stop the two of us from quilting? So the weekend was still on. Then our departure time changed when Karin found out a funeral she'd like to attend would be on the day we planned to leave. Still no problem, we simply leave somewhat later.

Early this morning Karin phoned, her dear Jeep is not going or taking us anywhere, so we needed a car. My car is way too low for the roads by the dam, we needed a 4 x 4 so DH was called to bring his car, give me emergency training on how to drive the thing so that our weekend can still realize. The bottom-line is that I believe bad things happen in 3's and we've had them all: weather, time delay and car trouble, so now all just has to go well. I got my basic training and all we'll do in the car is Park, Drive and handbrake. We won't be adjusting temperature, set speed control, switch on wipers or lights (this luckily happens by itself), reverse or adjust anything. Basic it will be all the way to and from the cabin. See DH even reversed the car into the garage so that I can just go forward.